Agencies: Clients Not Fully Using Available Tools, Unaware of Best Techniques

It’s not that clients are unwilling to invest in new technologies. It’s that they’re not fully utilizing the tools they have to improve and monitor ROI, according to advertising professionals surveyed by Demandbase. The inability to fully leverage those tools for ROI purposes is the biggest challenge (of those identified) that agencies have in meeting their clients’ needs, per the study.

The survey also shows that for some agencies, clients’ unawareness of the the techniques that best meet their needs also presents a challenge.

One such technique? Account-based marketing (ABM). While all of the agencies surveyed said they have clients who use ABM, there seems to be an issue with its awareness and understanding. For example, almost half (45%) of agencies said their clients don’t understand what ABM is, and close to one-third (32%) reported that their clients believe they’re using ABM when they are in fact not.

Agencies themselves are adopting ABM: two-thirds are already using it to provide better results for clients, and 70% of those who aren’t yet using ABM plan to integrate it into their client work in the future. Moreover, there seems to be strong appetite for hiring people with ABM experience in the coming year, which makes sense given that agencies feel that their clients lack education on the topic.